4G World: DragonWave doing microcells with a twistConnectedPlanetFinally, Taqua announced that Cellcom has selected the vendor's small cell core network infrastructure for its femtocell convergence solution. Cellcom is owned by Nsight, which offers wireless, wireline and other services in the Midwest. ...and more »

4G World: Verizon exploring small cells for adding future capacityConnectedPlanetEven if Verizon were to stumble onto a spectrum bonanza, the increasing pressure to address growing mobile data demands and to effectively offer cheap capacity would drive Verizon to implement small cell architectures in those new bands as well, ...and more »

4G World: IP.Access unifying femto, small cell gatewayConnectedPlanetTiller said that a converged management platform is key as femtocells evolve from private home and business coverage solutions to mobile offload points in congested networks. Operators that have deployed 2G femtocells will be able to migrate to 3G and ...

BelAir's latest small cell to integrate directly with the macro networkConnectedPlanetAt CTIA Wireless Enterprise & Applications it announced a stand-alone Metrocell, which combines its own specialty Wi-Fi access and mesh backhaul technology with any number of wide area network radios, creating a combination small cell, carrier data ...and more »

ConnectedPlanetIs it time for home and away pricing for telecom?ConnectedPlanetIn my home, everything should transmit over the same coax or fiber cable – my wireline voice, my wireline data, and as carriers get more sophisticated, even my wireless voice and data (through a local femtocell). I'd like this to be provided by my ...

Deal and technology focused on offloading signaling from both current generation and 4G wireless networks via IP and SIP. The goal: to help mobile operators maximize those networks while building a service bridge between the two worlds.

Will femtocells evolve into the small cells of the future?ConnectedPlanetThe macro network and small cell network would be deployed and managed separately, though they would collaborate through standard interfaces. Although the simplicity of the former approach is much more elegant, femtocells have the advantage of being a ...

InterDigital, Picochip meld Wi-Fi with femtocells for mobile offloadConnectedPlanetA big debate is brewing in the wireless industry over whether femtocells or Wi-Fi will emerge as the key technology for relieving increasingly overtaxed mobile data networks. InterDigital and Picochip are proposing a compromise: use ...and more »

ConnectedPlanetBelAir stakes its claim in small cellsConnectedPlanetWireless vendors have spent the last few months furiously unveiling their small cell strategies, proclaiming a future network where a layer of tightly packed cells below the macro network feeds the growing hunger for mobile data ...

Making the case for wireless backhaul for small cellsConnectedPlanetWireless vendors are rolling out their small cell architectures, predicting that operators will soon have to augment their macro networks with pico and micro deployments to fill in the capacity needs for ever-hungry mobile data ...

Though a femtocell can be installed anywhere, it can only use the airwaves owned by the operator that sold it. That’s why a femtocell owner can’t take it overseas and make calls over it just like he was at home.

Though little, femtocells present big management challengesConnectedPlanetOperators must be vigilant about fully testing and validating their entire femtocell ecosystems if they are to win over customers. ...

Small cells aren’t exactly a new concept for the wireless industry. As higher frequency bands have come online, operators have been forced to build tighter clusters of cells to deal with those frequencies’ lower propagation characteristics.

Is AT&T building a Wi-Fi bridge to LTE?ConnectedPlanet (blog)According to a new study by ABI Research, about 16% of all mobile data traffic today is diverted from the wide-area macro network to Wi-Fi, femtocells and ...

If you have a broadband connection and a mobile phone, you’re more likely than not interested in what femtocells have to offer — at least that’s what a study of U.S. consumers conducted by the Femto Forum and Parks Associates found.

Mosaic Telecom plans femtocell deploymentConnectedPlanet (blog)Mosaic plans to subsidize part of the price of the femtocells, which will cost customers $49.95. There will also be a $9.95 monthly fee for femtocell ...and more »

TM Forum: Empirix tunes monitoring for mobile IP coreConnectedPlanet (blog)Another application will be to help monitor the quality of voice traffic as it gets handed off from a local femtocell to a broadband network. ...

Getting serious about eliminating landlineConnectedPlanet (blog)It might be time for telcos to pledge to regulators that they will give away cell phones and perhaps even femtocells to some of these consumers, ...

ConnectedPlanet (blog)Beware the femtocell con gameConnectedPlanet (blog)The problem is that the femtocells are still in the early stages of development. The Femto Forum just succeeded in getting femto interfaces standardized ...